3 arrested for arranging fake passports, visas and travel papers

New Delhi, Dec 28 (PTI) Three men have been arrested for allegedly arranging fake passports, visas and other travel documents for sending people abroad, police said on Wednesday.

The accused have been identified as Jasvinder Singh Barmi (60), a resident of Sagarpur; Baljinder Singh (61), a resident of Janakpuri; and Harcharan Singh, they said.

An Indian passport and two forged visas were recovered from their possession, police said.

The fraud came to light after an FIR was registered on November 10 on the complaint of immigration officials who alleged that one passenger Ritender Singh, a resident of Kurukshetra in Haryana, had approached the departure immigration for clearance to Phuket in Thailand.

While checking his passport, it was found that the original pages of his passport were replaced with somebody else’s passport to hide the deported stamps and a fake immigration stamp was also found affixed on it, a police officer said.

During investigation, Ritender was arrested and he disclosed that there were three off-loading stamps on his passport, which were affixed by immigration counters at various airports.

He was facing problems in departing to other countries so he approached his friend Pankaj who further introduced him to Baljinder. Baljinder told him that he would remove the pages on which offloaded stamps were affixed and replace them with pages of some other passport and would further arrange for the visa of the United Kingdom.

“On December 19, Baljinder was arrested from Janakpuri,” Deputy Commissioner of Police (airport) Ravi Kumar Sungh said.

Baljinder told police that Ritender approached him for removing the offloaded stamps from his passport and the deal was fixed for Rs 11 lakh. Baljinder then contacted his known agent Harcharn to get the work done.

Harcharan was arrested from Dabri last week and Barmi was held from Sagarpur.

The DCP said Barmi is the mastermind of the racket and his friend Lucky, who is also a part of the network, is absconding and efforts are on to trace him.